A user may be equipped with a portable data processing device to facilitate the performance of a task. Although such a portable data processing device may be equipped with a keypad, keyboard or hand gesture recognition interface, the user may want to keep his hands free to perform the task or for his convenience. Speech recognition may be used as an alternate form of inputting information into a portable data processing device, but can be unreliable and cumbersome. Speech recognition is susceptible to inaccuracies from background noise or variation in speech patterns of the speaker. Speech recognition may require prodigious computational resources that tend to deplete battery life over an unacceptably short time period in a mobile environment. Accordingly, there is a need for facilitating user interaction with a portable data processing system that overcomes the aforementioned problems.